JFActivist: What Do Egypt, Libya and Wisconsin Have to Do With Disability Rights?

From the National Disability Leadership Alliance (formerly JFAAN) (3.9.11)
Please join us for the next Organizer's Forum!

TOPIC: Connecting Local Organizing with National and International Struggles...
 
"What do the labor struggle in Wisconsin and the protests in Egypt and Libya have to do with us?"

TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1-2 pm Eastern Time (10-11 Pacific)
Call in number: 712-432-0080
Code: 193134#

Speakers:
Jason Glozier, Grassroots Organizer, Access to Independence, and ADAPT Organizer

Tim Sheehan, Executive Director, Center for Independent Living for Western Wisconsin

3rd speaker TBA to help us talk about what the protests in Egypt, Libya, etc. have to do with local disability rights organizing

Topics to be addressed include:

* Do folks involved in local disability rights work need to know about the labor union struggle in Wisconsin and the protests in Egypt, Libya, and other countries? Why is it important?

* How do we connect folks on a local level to these other struggles? How do we educate people?

* How do we use these struggles to inspire people to take action on a local level?

CART: The call will have real-time captioning (CART)! The website where you will be able to view the captioning is http://www.2020captioning.com/livefeed.php?event=AAPD Thank you to the National Disabilty Leadership Alliance for sponsoring the captioning of this call.

NOTE: We have set up a listserv to allow everyone to easily get notices about the Organizer's Forum, called disabilityorganizing@googlegroups.com. Please check your spam filter for an invitation that you may have received, or email jlehman7@gmail.com so I can add you.

Background:

The Organizing Workgroup of the National Disability Leadership Alliance (formerly JFAAN) hosts these calls the third Tuesday of every month as a resource for disability organizers, in an effort toward building the organizing capacity of the disability community across the country. They generally follow the format of a Welcome followed by 2-3 experts in a given area speaking for 10-20 minutes on their experiences, advice and challenges. The calls include a 20-30 minute question and answer period.

To ask questions via CART: Sign-in to the Chat function on the right side of the transcript and type your question. One of the call facilitators will read out any questions posted there.

Because we want to maximize the generously donated CART services, we will begin the call promptly at 1pm and end the call promptly at 2pm (eastern time). A few other reminders about call etiquette:
· Say your name before each time you speak
· Speak one at a time
· Speak slowly and as clearly as possible

So you can mark your calendars now, Organizer’s Forums are held on the 3rd Tuesday of every month. If you have suggestions for call topics or presenters for upcoming topics, please email them to jlehman7@gmail.com or dcoleman@cdrnys.org.

Looking forward to talking with you all next Tuesday!

Jessica Lehman and Diane Coleman
Co-Chairs, National Organizing Workgroup

JFActivist: What do Egypt, Libya and Wisconsin have to do with Disability Rights?

The State of Grandparents Rights

When it comes to grandparents rights different states have different standards. This is because the 2000 Troxell Supreme Court decision splintered the laws and advocates of fairness in grandparents rights have been trying to catch up ever since.

All 50 states currently have some type of “grandparent visitation” statute through which grandparents, and sometimes others (foster parents and stepparents, for example), can ask a court to grant them the legal right to maintain their relationships with loved children. But state laws vary greatly when it comes to the crucial details, such as who can visit and under what circumstances.
Full Caring Grandparents Blog Post

Grandparents Rights » Grandparents Custody Options

Grandparents custody is occurring with greater frequency today due to many social factors. Certainly, the number of grandparents raising their grandchildren in their homes is skyrocketing.

Grandparents who take care of their grandchildren regularly, whether through a court order or because their children are unfit, may want to think about getting custody. Without legal custody, grandparents may find themselves unable to get proper medical care or take advantage of certain benefits their grandchildren may be entitled to.

There are several options to consider here:
Full Article

Man in Wheelchair Considered a Fire-Hazard | Wheelchair Accessibility Blog and Disability News

Richard Bryne, 37, an Australian, was forced to leave a Sunshine Coast cinema “Noosa 5 Cinemas” because he was told his wheelchair was a “fire hazard”. Richard and his mother set off on December 26th to go see the new movie Chronicles of Narnia, where he parked his chair off to the side towards the rear of the theater. For the past 15 years he has been going to the movies in his wheelchair after a surfing accident that left him with a metal plate in his neck and paralyzed from the waist down.

When the movie started, an employee approached him and asked him to move down to the front of the theater or he could leave. Richard stated, “I told the usher I could not sit in the designated disabled seating at the front of the cinema because of the metal plate in my neck.”

Richard continued, “I explained that I can’t look directly upwards and this is where I always sit.” After conversing with Richard, the usher went to discuss the situation with management. To Richard’s surprise, management agreed with the usher in that the chair was a fire hazard because it blocked the isles. Richard told them, “People could still easily get past me and that my mom was right here, ready to help move me if needed.”

“They did not listen and said I would have to go if I didn’t move. I was left with no option but to leave.”

Full Article

My New Grandparents Rights Book – Now Available | Grandparents Rights

by Neil Taft

I have just published the definitive volume on Grandparents Rights today. My new book No Greater Loss: The Guidebook to Today’s Grandparents Rights is now available in print. It contains everything you need to know about Grandparents Rights regarding visitation, custody, guardianship and much more.

I have written this book to help bridge the gap between Logic and Law. Grandparents have provided and still provide so much caring continuity in our extended families…and yet there is a danger that these relationships are being lost to misdirected anger and vindictiveness by irrational people in the process of fracturing the family unit.

This upheaval is happening at precisely the time when our grandchildren need a steady caring hand to reassure them. Like you, I feel strongly about the best interests of our grandchildren.

To get my new book and find out everything you need to know about Grandparents Rights just click below:
No Greater Loss : The Guidebook to Today’s Grandparents Rights

Editorial - Fairness for Older Workers - NYTimes.com

Image via WikipediaFifteen months ago, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority mowed past statutory language, Congressional intent and decades of precedent to make it much harder for older workers to prove age discrimination.
Read Editorial

AoA Awards $1.6 million to help Older Americans Understand and Exercise their Pension Rights

HHS Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee has announced more than $1.6 million in grants to help older Americans understand and exercise their pension rights.

Awards of $200,000 each have been made to six regional pension counseling projects, covering 27 states, with proposed expansion to include two more states (Indiana and New Mexico) over the three-year grant period. In addition, a National Pension Assistance Resource Center (Resource Center) which will provide critical training and technical support to the projects, as well as to state and area agencies on aging, Aging and Disability Resource Centers, and legal services providers, has been awarded $421,253.

“We know that many seniors across the country are concerned about their pensions and their retirement savings,” said Assistant Secretary Greenlee. “These pension counseling projects will increase the number of older Americans educated about pension and other retirement benefits, with particular emphasis upon underserved and hard-to-reach seniors, including those with limited English proficiency. By promoting the financial security of older persons, we empower them to make better choices in planning for their future needs including long term care.”
 
Services provided by the Administration on Aging’s (AoA) pension counseling projects include direct legal assistance to individuals pursing pension claims; locating pension plans that have been lost as a result of mergers, acquisitions, and terminations; answering questions about complex provisions of pension plans; and making targeted referrals to other professionals for assistance. The Resource Center will assist individuals living in areas not currently served by an AoA pension counseling project by expanding and maintaining a nationwide dataset of pension information and assistance resources, as well as a web-based pension assistance and referral system. 




The AoA first funded pension counseling and information projects in 1993 and the projects became a permanent program under the Older Americans Act in 2000. Since their establishment, the projects have directly served more than 35,000 individuals, resulting in nearly $100 million in retirement benefits recovered for individual claimants.


The following organizations have been awarded pension counseling grants:

Organization	Project Title	States Served
Elder Law of Michigan, Inc.	Mid-America Pension Rights Project	Michigan , Ohio , Pennsylvania , Kentucky , Tennessee (with expansion into Indiana)
Legal Services of Northern California	Western States Pension Assistance Project	California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii
Metropolitan Area Agency on Aging, Inc. (MN)	Upper Midwest Pension Rights Project	Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota
South Brooklyn Legal Services (NY)	Mid-Atlantic Pension Counseling Project	New York, New Jersey
Texas Legal Services Center, Inc.	South Central Pension Rights Project	Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma (with expansion into New Mexico)
University of Massachusetts Boston	New England Pension Assistance Project	Connecticut , Massachusetts , Maine , New Hampshire , Rhode Island , Vermont
Pension Rights Center (DC)	National Pension Assistance Resource Center	Nationwide

More information about AoA services and programs may be found at www.aoa.gov.

Press Release

"Forced Institutionalization of People With Disabilities Is Illegal" - DOJ and Federal Court Ruling

Steve Gold's Information Bulletin #317 (6/2010)    

By Gail Zoppo - Jun 25, 2010 reprinted from DiversityInc.

The U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Fla., ruled this week that Michele Haddad must be provided with services that will allow her to stay in her home. Haddad, who has a spinal-cord injury caused by a motorcycle accident with a drunk driver three years ago, was at risk of being forced into a nursing home because of changes in her caregiver situation. Although the 49-year-old woman has been on the waiting list for Medicaid community-based waiver services for two years and had alerted the state of her need, she was told that the requested services would only be available if she was admitted to a nursing home for 60 days.

In Haddad v. Arnold, the plaintiff argued that she would suffer irreparable harm if forced to enter a nursing home.

The court agreed, ordering the state to offer Haddad community-based services. The reason: Segregating people with disabilities is a form of discrimination, as found in Olmstead v. L.C. This landmark disability-rights decision determined that isolating people with disabilities in institutional settings deprives them of the opportunity to participate in their communities, interact with individuals who don't have disabilities and make daily choices. The ruling also acknowledged that unnecessary institutionalization stigmatizes people with disabilities.

The Olmstead decision, which marks its 11th anniversary this week, is not the first such case that the U.S Department of Justice has filed briefs. The DOJ is involved in several other cases in Illinois and New Jersey, as part of its mission to end discrimination against people with disabilities.

"In the Olmstead case, the court recognized that the unnecessary segregation of individuals with disabilities stigmatizes those individuals as unworthy of participation in community life," stated Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas E. Perez. "By supporting Ms. Haddad in this case, we seek to ensure that individuals with disabilities can receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate, where they can participate in their communities, interact with individuals who do not have disabilities and make their own day-to-day choices."

The Department of Justice's involvement in these cases reinforce the Obama administration's national efforts to protect the rights of all people.

"This work is a priority for the Civil Rights Division, and we are committed to aggressive enforcement of Olmstead so that we can build upon progress made over the last 11 years," said Perez earlier this week. "But our work is only one piece of a larger, administration-wide effort to make the promise of Olmstead a reality for individuals with disabilities nationwide. Real reform requires a holistic approach. As a lifelong public servant, I recognize that the most vexing problems a government faces are those that require unprecedented interagency collaboration and coordination. The unnecessary and illegal institutionalization of individuals with disabilities who would be better served, and better able to contribute to their communities, if they were provided services in integrated settings, is one of those problems."
   
Disability Advocates:

    Are there Michele Haddad's in your States?

Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues

Back issues of other Information Bulletins are available online at
http://www.stevegoldada.com with a searchable Archive at this site divided into different subjects. 

To contact Steve Gold directly, write to stevegoldada@cs.com or call
215-627-7100.

--
Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues

Related articles by Zemanta

• State Must Move Mentally Ill From Group Homes Soon (nytimes.com)
• Boris Mamlyuk: Several Reasons Why Closure of Lanterman & Fairview Does Not Pass Legal Muster (huffingtonpost.com)
• Will US Injunction Help Focus on Residential Care Needs of Persons with Autism in New Brunswick? (autisminnb.blogspot.com)

Health Reform Seeks To Protect Medicare Consumers from Fraud

In order to assure Medicare consumers’ access to new benefits, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is implementing several key fraud prevention measures included in the new health are reform law. In a June 2 webcast, Secretary Sebelius detailed a number of actions HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have taken to prevent Medicare fraud. HHS and DOJ will continue to collaborate on existing fraud prevention programs, such as the Senior Medicare Patrol program (SMP) and the South Florida fraud hotline, which engages consumers in fraud detection and reporting. New efforts to prevent fraud that are part of the health care reform law include steeper penalties for those who violate Medicare rules and improved oversight. For example, HHS hopes to be able to perform comprehensive data analyses to predict and protect against Medicare fraud.
Webcast panelists stressed a number of precautions that consumers and caregivers can take in order to help protect against fraudulent Medicare practices:

• Be aware: Anyone can be a victim of Medicare fraud
• Consumers should guard their identity closely: Call 1-800-MEDICARE to report suspicious behavior
• Do not give out personal information over the phone or internet: If you do not recognize the organization or person asking for your information, do not give information to them. Always ask questions about who they are and why they need your information. 
• Know that guaranteed Medicare benefits are the same and consumers do not have to do anything in order to continue receiving them.

Watch the webinar on preventing fraud, waste and abuse in Medicare.

Read about new efforts to fight Medicare fraud in health reform.

The hard road to grandparents visitation rights | Grandparents Rights

from caringgrandparents.com

Most people will tell you that grandparents do not have any common law rights to see their grandchildren. These people are not entirely correct. There is no basis in constitutional law as regards to grandparent visitation rights in the USA. And yet, there are cases in this country all the time where grandparents are found to be entitled to visitation rights.

It is not an easy road. In order for a grandparent to obtain such grandparents visitation rights, grandparents may have to present evidence to the court that the absence of visitation rights would be harmful or detrimental to the child’s health and welfare.

Since parents have an established elementary right to the care, custody and supervision of their child, the grandparents usually have to show that there is a satisfactory reason for the court to intervene. Therefore it can be difficult to prove such harm to the child.
Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Do Grandparents Have Rights? (blisstree.com)
• Changing Arkansas Grandparents Rights Law (socialactions.net)
• Noah Kirkman, 12, reunites with grandparents (calgaryherald.com)
• Calgary grandparents visit with boy at centre of custody dispute (canada.com)

Justice John Paul Stevens — The Practice of Medicine and the Rule of Law | Health Care Reform Center

Image via Wikipedia

by George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H. in the New England Journal of Medicine

Although it’s not a thought that has leapt to the minds of commentators, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will be missed by physicians and patients. Stevens believes that the Constitution prohibits government from interfering in personal decision making, including medical decisions that belong in the hands of physicians and their patients, not politicians and regulators; it was for this reason that he was Justice Harry Blackmun’s staunchest ally in upholding the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights decision.

One clear articulation of this belief can be found in Stevens’s 1991 dissent in Rust v. Sullivan, in which the Court upheld the “gag” rule prohibiting government-funded physicians from discussing abortion with patients. In his dissent, Stevens wrote, “Roe v. Wade and its progeny are not so much about a medical procedure as they are about a woman’s fundamental right to self-determination . . . free from governmental domination.”1 Similarly, in a 1990 dissent in Washington v. Harper, Stevens objected to what he saw as an abuse of medicine: the drugging of a prisoner for security reasons rather than health reasons. Stevens carefully examined the medical facts, including the side effects of the drug in a patient like the prisoner, Harper, who already had dystonia and akathesia from previous forced medication with psychotropic drugs.1 Close attention to both statutory language and the facts of the case before him are hallmarks of Stevens’s approach to adjudication. And by paying close attention to the facts of cases, he learned about medical practice on the job.
Continue Reading

Where do grandparents rights come from? | Grandparents Rights

Image by roblisameehan via Flickr

Why do grandparents have legal rights? Where do they come from?

The reasons grandparents rights exist are founded in three basic legal principals. You can learn a lot more about this matter by reviewing the material available through The Custody Center but for now, here is a primer.

The concept of grandparents’ rights is derived from three basic legal approaches.
Continue Reading

Mentally Ill Old Woman Tasered for Refusing to Move | World of Psychology

Image by erjkprunczyk via Flickr

By John M Grohol PsyD

Usually when one thinks of New England, one thinks of the seat of the War of Independence and home of states that value personal freedom and independence above virtually all else. After all, New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die.” This was where the very idea of peaceful civil disobedience was born in the U.S.

So when a police officer in Barre, Vermont (population: 9,291) decided that an old woman with mental illness wasn’t moving to comply with his requests, he decided to arrest her. And when the woman still wasn’t moving to allow herself to be arrested, Cpl. Henry Duhaime of the Barre (Vt) Police Department apparently decided to pull out his Taser, instead of his radio to call for backup.

Was the woman a coked up drug addict trying to fight off the police officer? Nope, the woman was a 58-year-old senior citizen who happened to be homeless and have a mental illness. She could be someone’s mother or grandmother. Her crime? Keeping her arms folded in front of herself, refusing to move, and then refusing to be arrested.

Henry Duhaime then went ahead and allegedly tased the old woman multiple times. It seems apparent from the report below that Duhaime allegedly became incensed because the Taser failed to work the first time and the woman began laughing at him. So he allegedly used the Taser again and again, until she complied with being arrested. If this sounds like something out of the old Soviet Russia, well, you wouldn’t be far from the truth:

Osborn kept her arms crossed, according to the report, prompting Duhaime to unholster his Taser. As had previously been reported, Osborn responded by saying: “Give me a thrill.” Duhaime then fired the Taser, but claimed the probes did not penetrate Osborn’s jacket and the woman doubled over laughing.

According to the report, that’s when things escalated.

“… I could see that this was not getting any results so I pulled out the cartridge and went for a drive stun to Osborn’s left thigh,” Duhaime wrote in the report that was presented to the council. “This did have some affect and she screamed a little bit and went down on her buttocks, in the shrub area, next to the store at which time the Taser slipped off her thigh.”

According to Duhaime’s account that is when Osborn, who was struggling to get up, “took a swing” at his knee and missed.

“… Before Osborn could get up I was able to apply a second drive stun to her right thigh,” he wrote. “This again kept her down and she began to scream. I advised her to roll over and place her hands behind her back, which she did and the Taser came off her leg losing contact again.

“Now Osborn was still screaming without the Taser being on her, and would still not put her hands behind her back,” he continued. “I again applied the drive stun to the back of her left thigh. Osborn finally complied, put her hands behind her back at which time I was able to get the handcuffs on her and take her into custody.”

The woman’s crime in this small town?

Standing outside the local Cumberland Farms. It’s not clear why she was being asked to leave the property in the first place.
Continue Reading

Voluntary End-of-Life Measures Banned at Catholic Hospitals - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By PAULA SPAN

In the 600 Catholic hospitals and hundreds of Catholic nursing homes around the country, such issues may grow more contentious in the wake of a new directive adopted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

As Harris Meyer recently reported in Kaiser Health News, the directive establishes “an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration” for those who can’t eat or drink, and it specifically includes patients in “chronic and presumably irreversible conditions.”

Patients whose advance directives prohibit feeding tubes if they have terminal illnesses or have entered a persistent vegetative state (as mine does) would either have to accept such treatment or transfer to another facility.
Read More

Strengthening Older People’s Rights: Towards a UN Convention

This publication was produced by a coalition of aging organizations internationally to strengthen understanding and awareness of the need for a Convention on the Rights of Older Persons. It aims to provide the arguments and tools for engaging stakeholders across the globe in debate about older people’s rights and the role of a convention.

Read/Download

Oakland settles lawsuit with disability rights group

Image via Wikipedia

By Kelly Rayburn, Oakland Tribune

City officials reached a settlement this week with the Berkeley-based Disability Rights Advocates over a 2007 lawsuit that said the city was ill-prepared to help disabled people in the event of a disaster such as an earthquake or firestorm.

The agreement requires Oakland to implement programs to specifically address the needs of the city's disabled residents in its emergency preparedness plans. Both sides said they are satisfied with the outcome.

Continue Reading

Florida Commits to Provide Effective Communication for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Persons

Image via Wikipedia

(Business Wire) The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) will provide qualified sign language interpreters as required by federal law to deaf and hard-of-hearing persons using its programs and services across the state under a Settlement Agreement reached with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

An HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigation found that the State violated Federal discrimination laws when it failed to provide interpreters to deaf persons in critical situations, such as during child protective services investigations, and during treatment in State mental health facilities. Access to quality health care and social services programs are directly dependent on effective communication.

Continue Reading

JFActivist: Judges Laugh at Arguments that Theaters Aren't Bound by the ADA

Image via Wikipedia

From the Hearing Loss Law & Wash. CAP Blog:

...The Arizona Attorney General's Office sued the Harkins theater chain, claiming that the business violated both ADA and Arizona state law by failing to show captioned and described movies. The AG was not suggesting that the theaters themselves had to provide the captions or descriptions, but only that they need to install the equipment necessary to show the captions and descriptions provided by the studios.

The theaters took the position that ADA does not regulate the contents of their products or services, and that they offer non-captioned movies. "We have the right to choose what services we provide, and that is our choice," said the attorney for the theaters. "We let everyone come into our theaters and see our (non-captioned) movies, and that is what ADA requires us to do."

The AG's office, on the other hand, said that captions are the kind of "auxiliary aid and service" that the ADA requires to enable people with hearing and vision losses to gain the "full enjoyment" of the businesses' offerings.

The judges basically said flat-out that they thought the theater argument is preposterous. Alex Kozinski, the chief judge, said, "What if we took the position that this building is a building with steps, and if someone in a wheelchair wants to come in, they can find somebody to carry them?"

Kozinksi went on, "Actually, that case happened, and some lawyer argued that being able to crawl up the steps was good enough. Today, people are laughing at that argument, and I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, people are laughing at your argument."

Continue Reading

Medicare Counselor - Medicare Rights Center

Image via Wikipedia

Inside This Issue of the Medicare Counselor from the Medicare Rights Center

Page 1 - What Happens to Social Security Benefits in 2010?

Page 3 - What You Need to Know About Part D Plans in the New Year

Page 8 - Deciphering MIPPA

Page 11 - Helpful Charts (Part A and Part B Costs)

Read/Download

What is the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Image via Wikipedia

from Even Grounds:

A milestone for the advocacy of the rights of persons with disabilities is now steadily gaining worldwide acceptance and support. This is known as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities refers to a document focusing on international human rights of people with disabilities. It was created by the United Nations and is being monitored by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Continue Reading